Search form

You are here

A stellar A Level performance from Putney High

Putney High School is yet again celebrating with over a quarter of all A Level entries achieving A* grades and the best Oxbridge results in six years, as well as five students who are heading to US universities,including Stanford.

Of the 70 students who sat A Levels at Putney this summer, 94% of all entries were a near record A*-B. Once again, half of all English and Further Mathematics students achieved A* as well as strong performances across the sciences and humanities. 100% A* grades were achieved in Chinese Mandarin, Latin, Design Technology (Textiles) and Music.

Headmistress Mrs Suzie Longstaff said: “We are absolutely thrilled for our students, who have worked so hard with their teachers to achieve such fantastic results. Thank you also to the girls’ parents, who have supported their daughters so well. We look forward to keeping in touch with the girls in the future as they move on and take advantage of all the opportunities now open to them.”

Amongst those celebrating is actress Sophie Simnett, who managed to combine her A Level studies and examinations with filming for a major new Disney TV series.Putney drama scholar Sophie was filming ‘The Lodge’ in Northern Ireland until the end of June.

Sophie said: “I’d get up at 5am to be ready on set for 8am. We filmed for ten and a half hours a day and I would get back around 8.30pm. Some weeks we worked on Saturdays. With an 11-week filming schedule, I had to be really strict with my time off. On Sundays, and some evenings when we wrapped early, I would order a takeaway and eat whilst reading about urban decline - sometimes falling asleep holding my textbooks!

On occasion, we would have time between scenes. I would bring my flashcards and some of the crew would fire questions at me about Tess of the d’Urbervilles! The teachers at Putney High School were amazing, regularly keeping me up to date with work - the Drama department even posted some of it to my hotel! I couldn’t have done it without them. When I returned from Northern Ireland I had one and a half weeks to learn as much as I could before my exams. After my last exam, there was little time to celebrate as I went straight back into rehearsals for live performances of some of the songs.”

While at Putney, Sophie has also appeared in Sky’s The Five and BBC blockbuster, Dickensian as well as starring in the music video for Maximo Park’s single, Midnight on the Hill. Later this year, she will be seen on the big screen in Niall Johnson’s Mum’s List, playing a young Kate alongside Emilia Fox and Rafe Spall. In The Lodge, Sophie plays 15-year-old Skye, who, following the death of her mother, swaps life in the city to take over the running of the family’s lodge. It airs on Disney Channel in 108 territories across EMEA later this year.

Great Britain rower Emma Andrews is off to read Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge after securing all A* grades, in Mathematics, Further Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics and in her Extended Project Qualification. Such has been her contribution to rowing at Putney that the school marked her success by naming a boat after her. Emma has just returned from Poland where she secured gold and silver medals for Great Britain at the prestigious Coupe de la Jeunesse event, where she was also GB Women’s Team Captain.

Emma said: “I train two or three times a day, six days a week, before and after school. That means I have to wake up at 5.45am to be on the water by 6.15am during the week, and by 7.00am on Saturdays. Luckily, I live close to the Putney High School GDST boathouse! You have to be efficient, proactive and productive.”

Emma is part of the highly successful group who head to Oxford or Cambridge. They include Claire Castle (Oxford, PPE); Emily Hazrati (Oxford, Music); Jo Heymann (Oxford, Engineering); Olivia Dawson (Cambridge, Geography), Dina Jundi (Oxford, History & Economics) and Georgia Bacon (Oxford, Psychology & Philosophy). Other highly successful students are Anna Carruthers, who along with Emma Andrews achieved 4 A*s, and Jo Heymann and Charlotte Rankin, who both achieved 3 A*s each. Five Putney students are off to universities in the United States: Anna von Preyss to Stanford, Catherine Blazye to Middlebury, where she has been awarded a Sports Scholarship, Claudia Babcock to Bowdoin, Eliza Wastcoat to Lehigh and Hannah Coles to Colgate.